Artist Statement
Budden’s work explores the complexities of spectatorship and the voyeuristic exploits within both cinematic practices and the traditions of figurative painting. The body occupies theatrical and highly staged, yet ambiguous, spaces that collapse the divide between reality and fiction. A space known only to the sitter. The cropped body is framed and disguised within illusionist portals to empower the observed to become the observer. These ghostly, psychologically layered, images haunt their audience. The spectator is given as a cold shoulder as the relationship between abjection and desire is questioned.
Through its fragmentation, the body breaks down traditional modes of representation. Instead, the aesthetic whole of the human frame is replaced by an inner voice, as the interior and exterior fuse. The mouth recurs as a metonym for this liminal space and the body becomes a site of rupture, autonomy and agency.
The work seeks to move beyond the threshold of conscious perception through the use of subliminal messaging and symbolic imagery such as fish, forests, and the ocean. All of which are symbols of the depths of the human psyche in Jungian psychology. The body is framed as morphic and escapes existing archetypes. Just as the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse, the self finds power in its fluctuating and indefinite state.
Bio / CV
Scarlett Budden (b. 1998 London, United Kingdom) is a British figurative painter working in London. Her works focus on the complexities of spectatorship and voyeuristic exploits within both cinematic practices and the traditions of figurative painting.
She completed her BA Hons (First Class) in Fine Art at Newcastle University in 2022. Recently, she completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. She is currently a resident at Studio West Arts and has exhibited both in the UK and internationally.
(Upcoming) August 2025 – Material Memory, Studio West Residency, London, UK
June 2025 – Flotsam and Jetsam, curated by Jamie Hope, Twilight Contemporary, London, UK
March 2025 – ‘Paradise Lost’, Art on a Postcard, London, UK
March 2025 – Face to Face, curated by Josephine May Bailey, 8 Vine Yard, London, UK
January-February 2025 – ‘South Open 3’, OHSH Projects, London UK
November-December 2024 – ‘Stemming from Unwelt’, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing China
June 2024 – RCA MA Painting Show, RCA Battersea, London UK
April 2024 – ‘Beauty in Chaos’, Hew Hood Gallery, London UK
February 2024 – ‘Body Songs’, Fitzrovia Gallery, London UK
July 2022 – Newcastle Graduate Show, The Copeland Gallery, London UK
June 2022 – Newcastle Graduate Show, The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle UK
July-August 2019 – Charles Cecil Studios Sight-Size Drawing Residency, Florence Italy
Contact
+44 772 597 8970
scarlett.budden@sky.com